In high-speed serial communication systems incoming signals may suffer from inter-symbol interference (ISI) and high-speed attenuation. Input gain stages can increase the signal amplitude before reaching the receiver comparator. However, this amplification also amplifies the ISI. This ISI amplification may be compensated for using a decision feedback equalizer (DFE). A DFE is a filter that uses feedback of detected symbols to automatically adapt to time-varying properties of the communication channel.